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Certainly Halo’s cut-scenes were, to me, more jaw-dropping, more lifelike.

But really, these are two games that have pushed the limits of console graphics (and they can only be fairly compared on the Xbox 360 since Halo 4 did not release on PC and won’t be coming to Wii U either) and shown us that despite the age of the hardware, truly remarkable things can still be achieved.

Alec Meer, whose humorous, imagistic prose never ceases to impress me, has a terrific passage on these beautiful, wasted terrains. Forgive me the long quotation, but it (and the rest of his review of the game) is well worth a read:

There’s this oft-repeated claim that Call of Duty games’ singleplayer are mere throwaway nothings, simply box-ticking to help encourage more punters into the annual $60 purchase of an ever-more refined but never truly changed multiplayer mode. I see what CODBLOPS does with its single player, the magnitude of what it builds even if it all as surface, and I know that claim is dead wrong. Every time this game switches to a new location, I feel as though I’ve just watched a few million dollars burn away on my screen. Only a fraction of what was built for singleplayer will appear in multiplayer: these 8-10 hours of breathless blockbuster frenzy were clearly a huge and expensive project, not a routine one.

Amazing things have been made, and the people who crafted these scenes deserve our respect. But then I find all I can do within these scenes is run forward in a more-or-less straight line while shooting a machine gun I can’t even remember the name of. It feels like absurd wastage, so much built and then only used as hoardings along the side of Black Ops 2′s ever-exploding road. At one point, having just shown off a breathtaking fully-modelled aerial view the aforementioned future mega-resort, the game then immediately drags you into the boring, pop-up baddie-filled maintenance tunnels underneath it, so your view of this awesome structure lasts mere seconds. I feel sad that this grand building was created but then used only in cameo.

Then, even more sadly, I think of all those other, less bullet-crazed games that could do so many things with vast, awe-inspiring environments like these, not simply pen the player into an alley. They will never have even a fraction of it, of course, because they are not the world’s best-selling videogame series. Oh, for a game in the vein of Vampire Bloodlines or Deus Ex to have had the nightclub level that this does. It would have made it into a maze of conversations and challenges and strangeness, but all this does with its vast, multi-tier space and legions of gyrating bodies is have you walk up to a door at the other end. It’s like someone spending years designing and building the Colosseum but then just using it as a coffee shop.

There are so many little touches too, signs of a visual design team free to indulge themselves, creating deft micro-ideas that there’s every chance the vast majority of players won’t even notice through the storm of blood and bullets and blind fury. Much of the game is set in 2025, so during a scene in an airport approaching one of the many billboards for fragrances and watches sees the face of the man in them replaced by that of whoever’s looking at them – specifically, the character you control at that point, Commander David ‘Section’ Mason. Minority Report stuff, yeah, but I’m amazed that they stuck such a tiny thing in there, this little breathe of cleverness within a game that is consciously obnoxious and mindless in so many other ways. Similarly, a 2025 jeep has a tiny, self-updating HUD on the corner of its windscreen detailing its emmissions, MPG and that sort of thing – a deft little reflection of what car culture might have become after another decade of a half of climate change fear and technological evolution. You pretty much have to squint to see it, but it’s there because someone made it even though it has nothing to do with the running and shooting and running and shooting.

This is all so painfully true. The corridor in Black Ops 2 changes background scenery and we’re privy to one gorgeous view after another, but we’re still trapped in that corridor amidst the bullets and explosions. Many, many times playing through the campaign I wished I could indulge my nagging curiosity, strike off the beaten path just for a moment, find some new approach.

But this is never allowed. Its terrain is window-dressing in the service of a strictly scripted guided tour of a story. What a shame. Multiplayer avoids this by actually allowing you to approach each map however you please, but of course this contains its own confinements and limitations.

Call of Duty has the budget and the popularity to risk more. The innovations in the game’s multiplayer show how taking a risk can make a game much better and more fun. I don’t think an “open-world” Call of Duty is in order, but I do think it’s time the franchise abandoned this rigid approach to level building. Make levels more open, give players more choices and more ways to accomplish each mission, and stop holding our hands. Give us the tools we need to make our way through the game and then let us choose how we will utilize them. I mean, obviously players come here for the player-vs-player. And it’s by far the most challenging thing about these games. If players are coming for the challenge, why not give them what they want in the single-player also?

Would this be a departure from one of the defining features of the series? Absolutely. But it would be a welcome departure and an evolutionary step that would strengthen the gameplay and, perhaps, make some use of these magnificent environments. I have no doubt we will never see something like this in a Modern Warfare installment, but Black Ops 3…why not?

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Since I never play corridor shooters this would open up CoDs or BLOPS market by one at the very least.

Harping on an old string, that was one of the frustrations with Mass Effort. Bioware WAS the master and hiding the fact that the story was on rails and giving you a decent illusion of player agency. (not even ME 1 was an open world or sandbox .. this was a good thing. I enjoyed the dynamic narrative). ME 3 might as well have been a corridor over the shoulder shooter by comparison.

If a corridor shooter injects a little plot and player agency… that would be an amusing Man bites Dog story.

Who knows? the seething pool of angry fan Bioware abandoned might haul their whiny entitled asses over to a new IP and start spending their money there. I know I might, and I count myself as one of Colin Moriarty’s ungrateful sorts.

Love how we compare everything to the failure that was ME3, at least story wise. I don’t believe these scenes/ levels are wasted to the extent that you suggest or the way. I believe that story telling in/ through games suffers greatly at this point in time i.e. ME3 as a suggestion. Eye candy is nice but if you can get the player to be concerned about the character he playing than “eye candy” isn’t as important. The story in COD Black Ops I and II is the stuff of bar napkins. Tom Clancy problem pukes in his mouth a little at the story in these things.

I just don’t know why linearity has to be such a bad thing — it allows for a control over the pacing and storytelling that Call of Duty wields with surgical precision. It’s built to be consumed in little chunks rather than big sessions, and i think there’s merit in that, as well. The same way social games get flack for being different than other games, but there’s something nice about a game that’s meant to pair with coffee and the newspaper.

Linearity is really only bad when the line you’re on sucks. Half-life, if I remember correctly, was fairly linear, but oh what a line! If the story or pacing or any number of things isn’t up to snuff, then linearity is really a drag, especially in today’s game-space where open-world and sandbox games are everywhere, and often very good. Why deal with a lame story when I can make my own?

Linearity is fine. Plenty of great games are linear while still being amazing. But handholding and railroading the players? Not so much.

Give us the choice to explore these amazing levels. They have the funds and the talent, they could give us the best of both worlds; with the cinematic experience that still allows you to feel like you have actual impact and freedom to explore.

To be fair my hatred of linearity. depends on the genre. I don’t mind that X-com has a linear story that either progresses down a certain path (or you lose). But then it’s not about that story it’s all about the tactical turn based battles which are kickass.

I don’t mind (SOME) Japanese ‘visual novels’ for being less linear than a corridor shooter but then… I’m not really playing a game. I’m consuming a story via a different entertainment medium.

In addition to not liking most Linear games. I’m also not a big fan of first person… so…

everyone has their likes and dislikes, those are mine. and they do not have any influence on any objective ‘artistic value’ of any given game. They just reflect what -I- will spend -My- money on.

Couldnt agree more, the early rainbox6 and ghost recon games have yet to be beaten for me when it comes to single player mode. They left you in total control of team members/weapons and you could wander the terrain at will. COD missed a trick here.